Evolution
by MrsVincentCrabbe
Summary: COMPLETE: Leonard never believed in evolution as a scientific fact. That was, not until he saw it happen before his eyes. Penny/Sheldon.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Leonard never really believed in evolution. He had studied it, knew it well, and even referenced Darwin as a great naturalist, but he never accepted it as a concrete scientific explanation for the invent of the world. It had shocked him to witness evolution before his eyes.

Howard and Raj, of course, had ignored it for the most part; Howard because his mind was in his pants and Raj because he was busy following Howard in the pursuit of women. Leonard lived there and he witnessed it happen before his eyes. It was just amazing to him, this microevolution of a single mammal becoming human. He would sit on his couch, composition notebook and freshly sharpened number two pencil in hand, trying his best to work on his hypothesis, when all he could write were notes about the dynamic changes occurring in his specimen. His margins were peppered with snippets of conversations it held, little glances, and changing habits. He really didn't notice it all until it was almost too late and the changes were going to be reversed. When the evolution was complete, and the specimen changed to resemble his new species and adapted to his new environment, Leonard stored that composition notebook under his bed. The title: The Evolution of being Human.


	2. New Years

Chapter One: New Year's

"Howard, how many times have I told you," Leonard whined as he opened the door to the apartment, "pants are more than a social norm, they are a requirement."

"Geesh, so sue me," Howard said, readjusting the towel around his waist the officer had given him.

"I think she's going to," Raj quipped, sitting down in the armchair closest to the kitchen. Leonard tilted his head back to rest it on severely underdeveloped trapezius muscle and drug himself to the refrigerator for a water.

"It's not just the pants, Howard," he said, taking a sip of his water, "it's the slap that hurt." Leonard rubbed his smooth jaw mournfully. The conversation was interrupted by Penny walking in the door.

"Hiya, guys." She immediately plopped down in Sheldon's seat. Leonard had never understood why Penny felt the need to do that. Howard and Raj had claimed the arm chairs and she would purposefully walk past two empty seat cushions to the one, one assigned seat in the house.

"So, Penny," Howard said, his typical lustful drawl in his voice, "heard you got Sheldon the ultimate Christmas gift." Howard chuckled, lending a slightly leery connotation to the comment.

"Yes, I did," she smiled.

"Oh, ho, ho, did you like," and here Howard paused to flick his tongue and wiggle his eyebrows, "giving it to him?" Leonard noticed that Penny had caught onto the theme in the conversation and had adopted a silky voice for her next comment.

"He liked it so much he even held me afterward," she leaned close to Howard and batted her eyes brazenly. A small squeak was heard from Raj's armchair and Leonard almost couldn't hold back his laughter at the expression on Howard's face. "Anything else you'd like to know?"

"No, no, I think this is the one time details would only increase my therapy hours." Leonard and Penny laughed a little as he brought waters over for everyone and passed them out.

"She gave him a napkin with Leonard Nimoy's signature and DNA on it," he intoned, playing her gift down a little for his own sake.

"You gave him Leonard Nimoy's DNA?" Howard practically shouted. Raj stated his disbelief by the outrageous size his eye had grown. "All I got was a coupon for a free AIDS test."

"From Penny?" Leonard almost spit out his water.

"No, my mother. That and another yarmulke. What'd you get Leonard?"

"Motorcycles lessons," Leonard supplied, a slight nasal tone in his voice that was of the frequency of whine.

"What, you guys act like I got him, I don't know, Superman for Christmas!"

"You might as well," Howard jumped in. "Leonard Nimoy was Spock! Spock! If Sheldon has a God, Leonard Nimoy is it."

"Wow," she said, looking at the faces around her, "I didn't know he was that big."

"How did you even know to get his autograph?"

"A bunch of people kept fawning over him and he always sent them away with that little hand thing so I just assumed he was in the show or something. I don't know; I never watched it!"

"Oh, Penny, Penny, Penny," Howard said, laying his hand on her knee, "Sweet, smooth skinned, long-legged Penny." She batted his hand away. "You gave Sheldon the ultimate nerd-gasm he's ever had and you didn't even really know. Why Sheldon, anyway?"

"I figured he'd appreciate it."

"I would have like Leonard Nimoy's used napkin for Christmas," Leonard muttered. Penny didn't have a chance to respond as Sheldon chose that moment to come out of hiding, carrying his laptop out with him.

"Why, hello there, Penny. Didn't hear you come in," he said, using the polite tone of voice his mother had taught him. He dropped his voice back to his usual tone and was able to mutter out, "Howard, Raj."

"Oh, I get it, we get him socks for Christmas and suddenly we're chopped liver," Howard muttered to Raj.

"Oh, come off it, everyone. Christmas is over, New Year's is coming and we aren't invited to any parties!" Leonard said, hoping to take the attention off of Sheldon and Penny for a moment. Raj hurriedly whispered something which Howard relayed as, "The University gala."

"Bah," Sheldon exclaimed from the computer desk as he typed, "like we're ever going to go to that."

"Well, why not?" Leonard said, tilting his head and smiling his hopeful smile.

"Because it is insipid," he said.

"What's so insipid about celebrating the New Year?" Penny piped up. She was greeted by the usual groans that always came about when she asked for an explanation of something she saw as simple.

"You never learn, do you?" Leonard whined.

"Why celebrate a day that's not even really the beginning of a new year, if you go by the Julian or Octavian calendars? Besides, the Chinese don't celebrate a New Year until the second new moon after the winter solstice and they follow a lunisolar calendar which is less arbitrary than the calendar invented by Roman Caesars."

"Why kind of party is it?" Penny asked the others.

"We can't go anyway," Leonard pointed out quickly. "Howard's banned."

"How was I to know she was the Dean's wife?" he quickly defended. "Besides, I didn't hear her complaining."

"I would think that was obvious when she knocked you unconscious and left you hanging by your belt buckle in the coat room." Sheldon got up from his perch at the desk and, without a word, sat between Leonard and Penny on the couch. The whole room froze, including Penny.

"What?" he said coolly, though Leonard could hear the high pitch of strain in his voice, "I can't join the conversation? Have I been exiled to Elba?" Leonard could see the constriction of his pupils and the nervous twitch of his pinkie fingers as he restrained himself from asking Penny to move. Penny's face lit up with some unknown emotion that Sheldon was sacrificing his seat for her. She didn't say anything but Leonard caught the look of appreciation that she gave Sheldon when he glanced over at her briefly.

Leonard wasn't aware that a single cell micro-organism had hatched on Christmas. The organism had evolved and grown cilia and was transversing his intestines, twisting them into knots at the sight of his stoic friend and the pretty girl across the hall sharing _a moment_. He had had moments with Penny but Sheldon couldn't. Sheldon was asexual. Someday, he was would just divide through mitosis and have an exact clone of himself. He could never have a moment with a woman. He couldn't even stand his own sister. Suddenly, the thought that Sheldon was getting closer to Penny made that micro-organism divide once, twice, three times. Tiny blastomeres were becoming the morula which would become the fetus of a monster within Leonard. And Leonard, trying to ignore this growing morula, couldn't help but think this monster within him would evolve to have green eyes.


	3. Rock Band

Chapter Two: Rock Band

Knock, knock, knock. Penny already knew who it. She could always tell from the cadence of beats and the whispered "Penny!" that followed. Knock, knock, knock, "Penny!" She stood in front of the door, the beginnings of a smile growing on her face. _Just once more_, she thought. Knock, knock, knock, "Penny!" Penny answered the door, knowing his OCD was satiated for now.

"Sheldon?" she said, that smile still blooming in the apples of her cheeks.

"I was going to invite you to play Rock Band with us," he said, relaying the message like some medieval messenger boy, a sense of regality and chivalry in his tone.

"Oh, is it Rock Band night?" She was testing him, she knew. Normal Sheldon would bite off a hasty, "Well, of course it's Rock Band night; why else would I be inviting you? Maybe I should rethink my invitation." This new Sheldon held his tongue, though a bit painfully, and nodded.

"Would you like to join us?"

"Can I sing?" she smiled wider as Sheldon bit back his response. She had purposefully used 'can' instead of 'may' to see his reaction. She could hear his, "Well, the ability to make the guttural tones that could be called a song is generally shared by most speaking homo sapiens, though that says nothing about their mastery of the concept nor their inherent ability to perform the task to standard."

"If you would like," he conceded. She smiled, patting him on the shoulder.

"You don't have to do this, sweetie."

"Do what?" he gasped, faking ignorance to his act. Penny laughed because of the endearing face he made.

"You don't have to treat me special forever, just because of the napkin, okay? The hug and baskets were gift enough. See, I even used the green soap today. Smell," she commanded, holding her arm out to him. He held her soft arm up to his nose and took a hesitant sniff of the flesh there. He had expected it to be the pungent, nauseating, overwhelming fragrance that had wafted from the aforementioned baskets; instead he was treated to the soft scent of _Pyrus pyrifolia_ (Asian Pear, he annotated to himself) and _Lonicera sempervirens_ (honeysuckle) blended with her own neutral backdrop of pheromones and sweat. "So, don't keep bothering yourself for me, huh, sweetie?"

"I wasn't bothering myself," he insisted.

"Well," she started, taking a step away from him when she realized just how close she had stood to let him smell her arm, "consider your debt repaid. Reciprocity is fulfilled. Now, let's go play Rock Band." Sheldon couldn't help but sigh a little that she thought so little of him that he could only be kind for reciprocity's sake. He had formed the logical conclusion that a step had been taken in their friendship to where he was socially required to display a kinder affection for her than neighbor. At least, that was the logic he had invented to cover it. It rationalized it quite nicely for him and he refused to think anything beyond it.

* * *

"I'm going to rock and roll all night..." Penny screeched into the microphone as Howard and Leonard played the guitars rather unenthusiastically and Raj tapped out an uncertain beat on the drums. Sheldon was calmly watching from the arm of the couch. Howard edged closer to Leonard, whose face was the picture of pain, and staged whispered, "Is that song even on Rock Band?"

"No," Leonard groused, wishing he could take his hands off the frets to stop the bleeding from his ears but refused to break the bass groove he had going, "this is Detroit Rock City by KISS. I think all she heard was KISS."

"Are you going to stop her?"

"No, are you?" Howard shook his head violently and looked hopefully to Raj. Raj looked pitifully up at him and opened his mouth, only to squeak and look back at the screen. "Oh, what was I thinking?" The song ended and the three boys sighed heavily in relief. She turned around hopefully, eyeing each one of them.

"How'd I do?" Raj grimaced but tried to hide it behind a rather painful smile. She looked next to Leonard who started to sputter like a clogged engine.

"Ah, well, ah, well...." he rubbed the back of his head with a free hand, stuttering over his words, "Gee, Penny, i-i-i-it was...i-i-it was..."

"It was," Howard muttered. She snarled her lip at them both of them. She looked to Sheldon who quickly said, "Points for enthusiasm." This seemed to placate her as she hummed happily and whirled around smiling to instruct Raj to pick the next song.

"What'd you even invite her for? You're never going to get any of that by stuttering," Howard whispered harshly to Leonard.

"I didn't invite her!"

"Well, I didn't invite her!" Howard looked over at Raj who just gave him a deer in the headlights look. "Oh, why do I even try? Well, it you didn't invite her, and I didn't invite her, and Punjab over there-" Raj smacked Howard in the knee with a drumstick for that remark, "Ow," he spat in Raj's face, "-didn't, then..." all three looked at Sheldon helping Penny navigate the song list to find that one song by Bon Jovi or Bono or whoever it was.

"Aw, his other testicle must have dropped," Howard quipped which earned his another whack from the drumstick and a backhand from Leonard. "Again, ow!"

Leonard couldn't believe his eyes. There was Sheldon, pointing out different facts about various bands as Penny flipped through her choices, a tiny smile on his lips as he spoke. He had invited Penny of his own free will; no lectures about social norms, no expectations of reciprocity, no wheedling from Leonard to include her. He had done something social all on his own. Leonard felt a tail sprout from his tiny monster. It began swimming viciously all over his body, making his eyebrows drop and a frown form on his face. He looked at Penny laughing about something Sheldon had said and the little devil grew eyes and arms and punched him in the stomach. He sat down, unable to take it all in standing up. Something was happening and Leonard didn't like it.


	4. What the devil?

Chapter Three: What the devil…

_Boom, boom, boom._ "Oh, dear," Leonard sighed, peaking his head out of the apartment door. "Oh, no," he groaned as his suspicions were confirmed. "Defcom five."

"Leonard, we've already had this discussion. Defcom five means no dan-" Sheldon started but was cut off by Penny slamming the door to her apartment so forcefully that it shook the pictures in their apartment. "Defcom five," he conceded quickly.

"What should we do?" Leonard said, pacing the living room in five large strides. "What should we do?"

"What dictates we do anything?" Sheldon said, a long winded explanation of his logic cut off by another mysterious slam coming from Penny's apartment. "I'll get my emergency evacuation bag."

"No, no, no" Leonard started to chew violently on his thumb. "Think I should go over there?"

"You can but it's your dirge," Sheldon warned, "and Penny will be singing it." Another slam had both Leonard and Sheldon ducking for imaginary cover. "My God, it's like 'Stomp' around here today."

"I'm going over there."

"You have written a will, haven't you? Because I refuse to battle Raj and Howard for your comic book collection when it should rightfully be mine as best friend and roommate, per contract." Leonard sighed and walked out the door. He stood hesitantly in front of Penny's apartment, chewing on a fingernail."Well," Sheldon goaded from the doorway of their apartment, "go on."

"You just going to stand there and watch?"

"The police will want witnesses," Sheldon said without a hint of sarcasm. Leonard raised his hand and knocked. He heard Penny sobbing on the other side.

"What?" she practically screamed.

"Uh, hi, Penny?" Leonard said awkwardly through the door. "It's me, heh heh, Leonard."

"What do you want?" she sobbed.

"Can I come in?" Leonard didn't know what it was but Penny hurdled something extremely heavy towards the door. Leonard jumped with the resounding 'thud' and backed away. "I take that as a 'no'?" Penny let out a mournful moan.

"Well, that was a real home-run, Michael Jordan."

"Michael Jordan played basketball," Leonard moaned as he slunk back to the apartment, defeated.

"Your point?" Leonard threw himself onto the armchair. "Perhaps I should give it the old college try?" Sheldon said hopefully. "I never really understood that phrase. It would implying college was actually trying." Sheldon turned quickly on his heel and was out the door before Leonard could get out of the chair.

"If you die, I get your Superman miniatures."

"Don't be...Penny!...ridiculous," Sheldon said as he knocked his special knock, "I've already willed...Penny!... those to Raj. You get my Star Trek costumes." Sheldon knocked the third time, "Penny!" and stood waiting. She cracked the door open a bit."Mind if I come in?"

"Did you bring booze?" she sniffled.

"No." She thought about turning him out but decided she could at least vent on Sheldon. He wouldn't get his feelings hurt so easily. She opened the door wide enough for him to slip through but not enough for her to notice the evident surprise on Leonard's face. Sheldon stood in the center of her living room, suddenly realizing the predicament he had placed himself in. Penny was a mess. She had thrown her hair back into what she called defined for him as a messy bun when, in fact, it only reminded Sheldon of a bust of Medusa he had once seen. Her eyes were rimmed in the mascara she had worn that day and she had already changed into her comfort robe and ratty house slippers.

"Care to share why you look like raccoon Barbie?" She grabbed a tissue angrily and started rubbing her eyes. "Well now you look like you have a bad case of conjunctivitis."

"Thanks, Sheldon, I though you were going to make me feel better. I had the absolute worst day of my life," she started, not even offering for him to sit. She threw herself on her couch and picked up a large thing made of yarn and started to fiddle with it. "First off, I got to work late because my tire blew on my way there. Then, I get the rudest customer I have ever met. Sheldon, he would grab my ass every time I would walk away from the table!"

"No!" Sheldon said, fulfilling Penny's need for human empathy with his mock horror.

"Yes! When I told my boss, he told me it was just harmless fun. Shake it off, Penny. I couldn't do it. I blew up on the customer. I dumped his clam chowder down his pants."

"Penny, I hate to interrupt but what the devil are you doing?" he said, pointing at the yarn thing that was growing as she spoke.

"Oh," she chuckled, her anger forgotten for a moment, "it's crocheting, Sheldon."

"Ah, yes, from the middle French _croche_, meaning 'hook'."

"My grandmother taught me just a few simple stitches when I was nine. I only ever take it out when I'm angry."

"Why haven't I seen it before?"

"Scratch that, only when I'm angry and out of booze." Sheldon watched her nimble fingers loop and whirl the yarn around the little metal hook in her hand. She held it deftly with her fourth and fifth digits of her right hand while using the second and third to maneuver the hook through the pattern. Penny felt suddenly self-conscience with Sheldon's observant, scientist eyes on her. She threw down the yarn and looked away. It amazed her to see Sheldon pick up the work and start to mimic her.

"Sheldon, I didn't know you could crochet!"

"I can't. I am merely repeating the algorithmic pattern of your movements to achieve the same goal."

"In English, you're copying me."

"That's what I said, isn't it?" His stitches were quite as tight and practiced as hers but were technically sound and damn impressive.

"Hey, Sheldon," he didn't look up from his work, "thanks for talking me down." Sheldon put the crochet down and shifted his eyes to every focal point in the room but the pretty girl in front of him. Sheldon nodded and stiffly stood. "Hey, when this is done, you can have it." She held up a patchwork throw blanket of numerous, clashing, odd colors of yarn in no decipherable pattern.

"Thank you?"

"What? I've been working on it since I was nine! I would just add whatever color of yarn I had when I ran out." Sheldon let a little smirk slip on his lips.

"I'll look like Joseph in the technicolor dream coat." Penny opened the door, a bright smile on her lips. She playfully smacked Sheldon as he walked out. Leonard was leaning on the doorway.

"Oh, hey, Leonard," she said as an afterthought. "Night, Sheldon." Sheldon waved awkwardly and turned to the questioning look on Leonard's face.

"A magician does not reveal his secrets."

Author's note: I don't think it's as funny as the last two chapters but it's a bit more plotfull. Hope Sheldon was Sheldon-y enough! Do remember I have no beta so I just write and post so all typos are my own ignorance and laziness.


	5. Hollywood PhD

Chapter Four: Hollywood Ph.D.

"Penny!" Sheldon knocked for the last time. Penny drug herself to the door and watched Sheldon bulldoze his way into her apartment uninvited."Penny, you'll never believe this. My mother sent me my complete collection of the X-Files yesterday and you need to be..." he stops talking when he notices the man sprawled out on Penny's couch. "Penny," he says quickly, rounding on her like a hawk on a field mouse, "who is this man?"

"Well, Sheldon, that's my date, Paul." Paul offered a hand to Sheldon. Sheldon regards it with disdain and turns back to Penny.

"Send him away," he demanded.

"What? Sheldon, no!"

"Why? Did I interrupt coitus?" Paul's eyebrows scrunched together. Sheldon looked down at him and harshly said, "that means sex." Penny was a little surprised by the amount of emotion in Sheldon's voice, if she could call it that. He was looking and talking to Paul, not just like he was below him, but that he did not deserve to breathe. Sheldon may regard the normal population as common and unsophisticated, but he never had this magnitude of actual hate for the human species. Penny needed to get him out before she thought too deeply into all this.

"Sheldon, sweetie, I love you but you've got to go," she sighed, pushing him out her front door.

"Well, excuse me. I guess now _I'm _the FBI's most unwanted." She gave him the quizzical look she had patented for his nerd-isms and intelligent conversations. He held up the first season boxed set, "you'd know if you watched it with me."

"Bye, Sheldon."

"I'm coming over tomorrow. It's Thai night. I'll order your favorite."

"Wouldn't have it any other way. Bye, Sheldon," she said with a hint of sarcasm and impatience. She slammed the door in his face.

"What was that?" Paul said, his voice sounding shallow and dumb to her after Sheldon's confident intellectual tone.

"That was my friend Sheldon." Whoa, friend? She always introduced him as her neighbor to people, normal people. She may think of the boys as her friends but didn't really admit that to people. Penny didn't let herself really think on that.

"Some friend. Treating me like that."

"Like what?"

"I think he was jealous."

"Sheldon was not jealous," she scoffed, moving to curl up to Paul's body. He grabbed a hold of her waist and pulled her close. Suddenly, his phone started to vibrate on the coffee table where he had thrown it down. Penny grabbed it and looked at the caller id, ignoring Paul's protests.

"Brittany less than 3?" she read incredulously, knowing that was the code for a little heart. "I knew it. I knew she wasn't your sister! You ass!" she threw the phone at his chest.

"Penny, wait!"

"No, give me proof she's your sister." He sighed, obviously knowing he couldn't lie his way out of this one. He'd try, at least.

"Would it help if you knew she knows I'm here with you?"

"No! I knew you had a girlfriend when I saw you carrying that laundry bag full of underwear." Penny made a nasty face and started to mock him. "Oh, it's my sister Brittany's things. She's got the flu so I thought I'd be a good brother-bleh!" Penny grabbed him by the shirt collar. "Out! out!"

"Whoa, baby," he tried to work with her as she opened the door and threw him out, "Brittany's into this kind of thing, you know." Penny huffed and screamed before slamming the door in his face.

"Well, that was a real home-run, Michael Jordan," Sheldon hissed venomously from the doorway of his apartment. Paul sneered at Sheldon.

"Michael Jordan played basketball."

"And a short stint in baseball. I googled it." Paul popped his collar and stalked down the stairs. Sheldon went back into his apartment with a horrifying little smile on his face.

* * *

Sheldon didn't even bother to knock. He strolled right into Penny's apartment to find her arranging the cushions by color on her couch, just the way he always did before he sat down.

"No Paul tonight?" he said, trying to seem innocent yesterday but came across as creepy.

"No Paul ever. You're my date tonight," she said, almost wishing she could stop the words before they spilled out.

"Good," he said, "because each episode is roughly 45 minutes long. I calculated that we could watch five episodes in roughly 4 hours."

"Whatever you say, Sheldon." He handed her her box from the Thai food place. "Hey, why didn't you watch this with Leonard and the boys?"

"They all already seen them. I wanted to watch it with someone who can't analyze each episode with prior knowledge of what's to come."

"Oh," was all she said before he turned out the DVD and set about to eating in his perfect, peculiar manner.

* * *

"Sheldon, she didn't get bit, did she?" Sheldon chuckled from his place on the couch. Penny had, at some point, slid to the floor in her rapture at the show. She had thrown her hand up to his knee and was smacking it incessantly, never taking her eyes off the screen. Scully had just discovered the small marks on her back that they had found on all the "alien abductees".

"Watch the show and find out!" She stopped hitting him, absentmindedly leaving her hand on his knee. Sheldon froze, staring at it. Penny kept talking but he didn't hear a word of it. He was too busy panicking. She moved her hand when she started to squeal at Mulder and Scully's moonlight conversation in the hotel.

"Oh, it's so romantic!" she said, clapping. "They are totally going to get together!"

"Not for almost eight years, though some argue as early as six. Besides, they aren't exactly having the most romantic of conversations, Penny."

"Oh, Sheldon, where's your sense of romance?"

"Humans do not have the sense of romance. Vision, audition, somatic sensation, olfaction, gustation, thermoception, nociception, and proprioception are the common senses of all humans." Penny turned and gave him the "what the hell?" face, laying her hand back on his leg. "Sight, hearing, smell, taste, temperature, and pain. Proprioception, however, is more abstract. It is the sense of where your limbs are in concordance with your body and surrounding space using non-visual stimuli. Obviously, as the young people say it, you fail," he said, pointing to her wandering limb.

"Oh!" she blushed, moving her hand away from his body, "sorry about that." She hurriedly and embarassedly turned back to the episode to see the credits running. "Want to watch the next one?" she offered. She settled back against the couch and was doggedly determined not to look at Sheldon for the rest of the night.


	6. Halo Night Misconceptions

Chapter Five: Halo Night Misconceptions

"If you split Wolverine in half," Howard said wistfully as the four sat down to lunch at the university, "would he regenerate into two Wolverines?"

"Well, that's absurd," Sheldon began, popping open his Sprite and pulling out his silverware he brought from the house, "what implement could you use to saw through the adamantium?"

"Let's hypothesize that there is some sort of mechanism that can," Leonard said, "are you cutting him lengthwise or through his stomach?"

"Of course it would be a sagittal plane," Sheldon sighed. "His whole survival depends upon his brain. He only survives incineration because his brain and spinal cord are protected by the adamantium skull and vertebrae."

"So, would splitting his brain effectively kill him?" Raj added quickly.

"Not necessarily; a person can live with half a brain and I would say that Wolverine would be able to regrow his brain just like his other organs," Howard said.

"Metaphysically, would it be like an evil twin scenario?" Raj mentioned a little off to the side.

"Oh, now this is just starting to sound like a bad fanfiction. Splitting of souls, huh! Well, gentlemen, as much as I love these little dribbles you call conversation, I have to go as I have a very pressing engagement," Sheldon informed them.

"With who?" Leonard accused.

"Whom. My research, of course," Sheldon threw his trash away. "Remember, it's Halo night." They all nodded and went back to their lunches. With Sheldon, could any of them ever forget it was Halo night?

"Guys," Leonard started as soon as he was sure Sheldon had left for his 'engagement', "you don't think there is something strange going on with Penny, do you?"

"No," Raj said, slurping his drink."Why would you ask that?"

"I just mean...she had Sheldon over to watch the X-Files. He was over there for nearly five hours. Oh, and, she came home crying one day and she let Sheldon in but threw me out."

"Oh, cock block!" Howard exclaimed. Raj and Howard shared a hardy laugh at Leonard's expense.

"Guys! I'm being serious!" he whined like a middle school girl, "don't you see anything weird?"

"There's nothing weird about you getting denied, Leonard," Raj laughed.

"We still have that tape from the hallway if you need more evidence."

"Thanks, guys." Leonard left the table, trying to convince himself that, if Howard and Raj didn't see it, it wasn't real. This did nothing to stop his stomach from rolling at the thought of Sheldon placating a distraught Penny, of Sheldon spending five hours alone with Penny. His little monster was maturing and growing into a mischievous and vindictive little ankle biter. It gnawed on the apex of his heart and pushed on his diaphragm. It blew smoke into his veins and made them burn with a new, dare he call it, jealousy.

* * *

"Major Koothrappali, you need to go into the basement. Captain Wolowitz, cover him!" Leonard heard Sheldon say through the handset. Sheldon had long ago dictated that Leonard had to play Halo in his room on his XBOX 360 while Sheldon would play his in his living room. They couldn't sit close together with the headsets; they would feed back. Besides, wasn't the point of Halo Live not to play it with people in the room with you?

"Lieutenant Hofstadter, 3 o'clock," he heard Sheldon (oh, excuse him, General Cooper) instruct. He heard the door to their apartment open. "Oh, hello, Penny."

"Hey, Sheldon, Halo night, huh?" Leonard heard Sheldon grunt in response as he continued to play the game. Leonard heard Penny say something else but couldn't make out the words.

"Ensign, I don't see yo-" Sheldon's words were cut off like someone had covered his mouth. "Penny, I told you, could you at least warn me before you do things to my person?" Leonard couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

"What? I'd thought you'd like it. Didn't it taste good?"

"Oh, dear God," Leonard heard Howard moan through the headset. If he hadn't been jumping to conclusions, he was now.

"I never degraded its flavor; I merely stated that I would like some warning."

"Fine, fine. Warning!" Sheldon let out a muffled moan.

"What are you doing?" Sheldon sputtered out as soon as he was "unoccupied".

"Just wait," Penny teased. Leonard listened to the silence that came from the headset. He wasn't going to jump to conclusions. He was not going to be Howard. He was going to be the good friend. Monster or no monster, he wouldn't let this all get to him. He was better than the little creature cutting his teeth on his myocardium. The silence was getting to Leonard and he was almost ready to jump up and run out to the living room to investigate when he heard Sheldon screech and pant.

"Penny!" Leonard listened to Sheldon wheeze heavily into the microphone for a moment before he recovered enough to shout, "You got it on my Tuesday pants!"

"Oh, Sheldon, I'm sorry. I was trying to be careful. It just...spilled."

"I'll have to change. Here, you play." The microphone thumped and hissed as it switched hands.

"Sorry, sweetie," Penny called to Sheldon as she put on the headphones.

"Uh, Penny," Leonard said, his vocal cords raw from the monster's claws scratching and clutching at his throat, "what was all that?"

"Oh, I spilled some hot fudge sauce from my ice cream on Sheldon ."

"Oh, you guys were...uh, eating ice cream?"

"Yeah," she said absently as she blew up some more aliens, "I was feeding him his as he played."

"Oh," Leonard squeaked. "That's all?"

"Yeah, why?" Penny blew up a whole building, which, unfortunately, had Raj and Howard inside.

"Aw, Penny! We were playing co-op!" Howard said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Sheldon had let Penny touch his food.


	7. TwiWHY?

Chapter Six: Twi_Why?_

"Sheldon, you ready?" Penny said as she stuck her head in the door.

"Oh, hi, Penny," Leonard said, waving a little awkwardly from his perch on the couch.

"Hey, Leonard, what's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just doing some research online."

"Oh, about what?" Leonard got cagey and jittery.

"Ah, well... fine, I was playing Age of Conan."

"I thought so," Penny smirked victoriously. She settled back, crossing her bare legs and swinging her foot in time to an imaginary rhythm.

"So, what are you guys doing tonight?" Leonard asked, trying to sound cool and smooth but squawking like a baby bird. She twisted her lips into a vindictive grin. Leonard couldn't quite tell if she was directing it at him or Sheldon.

"I'm taking him to see Twilight."

"Twilight?" Leonard had never heard of it.

"Love story between a human and vampire."

"Really?" he snarled. "Why?"

"It's my turn," she said simply, picking at her fingernails. Sheldon came walking briskly in to see Penny lounging on his couch.

"You're late," she accused.

"I disagree. You're early," he shot back.

"Let's just go," she sighed.

"Are you driving him, Penny?"

"No, we're to walk. It's not that far," Sheldon demanded.

"Fine, fine, I wore comfortable shoes anyway." Penny was half out the door when she turned on Sheldon. "You asked Leonard if he wanted to come with us, didn't you?"

"No," he said exasperated, "Though I very much doubt he'd want to go. I don't even want to go. I looked this movie up online. A vegetarian vampire, Penny?"

"Ask him," she hissed. He sighed and turned around, the look he got when his mother ordered him around playing on his face.

"Penny would like to know if you would like to go to the movies with us?"

"That's very nice, Sheldon, but I think I'll stay in tonight." Leonard's little monster was banging away at his brain for the stupidity of the decision. The monster said "go, watch them. Make them know you disapprove. Sabotage!" And yet, Leonard didn't think he had the emotional fortitude to watch them converse and interact, to see Sheldon make Penny laugh, to see Penny shine a new light in Sheldon's eyes. Leonard saw it. Even when they were fighting and sighing at each other, like earlier, there was a difference in Sheldon's eyes. He enjoyed their little verbal spars, even if he felt he and Penny were unevenly matched. Leonard just looked away, hearing the door shut was like hearing a part of him quit trying. Defeated, the monster kicked hm in the side, making him wince at his own cowardice.

* * *

"Penny! I will not!"

"Sheldon," Penny sighed, "it's my turn and we will see what I want." Sheldon and Penny walked towards the ticket line as they squabbled, bickering over movie choices and reviews. Penny didn't hear the female voices calling her name.

"Penny! Hey, girl!" Penny finally turned around, handing Sheldon the money and threatened him to not buy the right tickets.

"If you don't," she warned, "you have no way of knowing your food is untouched." Sheldon sighed. Great power, indeed. Penny turned towards her friends.

"Hi, girls. What are you here for?"

"To see a movie, Penny, obviously," Sheldon said as he waited for their change. She hit him, not noticing the strange looks her friends were giving her.

"Just go in and find the best seat in the theater. I'll be in in a minute." Sheldon handed her her ticket.

"Just don't come in late. You know how I hate-"

"Late movie goers, I know." She pushed him in the door.

"That your new...boyfriend, Pen?" Carol said slowly, not believing.

"Nah, that's just my friend Sheldon." She tried to brush it off that they would think they were together. It was an honest mistake. She was a woman, he...could pass for human. They were at the movies...together...alone together. She tried to change the subject but they didn't seem all that interested in conversation. "Hey, are you here to see Twilight?"

"Yeah, we are. It's so romantic," Carol sighed.

"Robert Pattinson's not that bad, either," Jessica leered.

"I'd tap that," the first giggled madly. Penny sighed a little. It sounded so middle-school to her and she felt like she was above that anymore.

"You can sit with us, if you like," Penny offered. The smile slipped from both of their faces. They couldn't help but to fake it and say yes, knowing it would hurt Penny's feelings to say anything different. They made their way into the theater to hear Sheldon making a loud "mah!" sound.

"What the hell is your boyfriend doing?" Penny sighed. They would never get this right, would they?

"He's not my boyfriend. And he's testing the acoustics of the theater."

"He's doing what?"

"He looking for the best seat in the house." She knew this was going to be a long night. Perhaps making Sheldon see this movie wasn't to be so vindictively sweet as she thought. They seated themselves and Penny tried to make polite introductions.

"These are my friends Carol and Jessica, Sheldon. Girls, my friend, Sheldon." The girls held out their hands to shake Sheldon's but he eyed them like they were but trained monkeys before Penny smacked his arm and he grudgingly shook their hands (more like barely touched their fingertips) before digging for the hand sanitizer in his pocket. Penny snatched the bottle from his hand and stashed it in her purse, hissing "that's rude, Sheldon!" before smiling and apologizing for him. By the Grace of God, the movie started and Penny was able to lose herself in the romance of Edward and Bella. Sheldon, though, was not impressed. He would snort derisively during romantic sections and outright laughed during Edward's "you could never run from me" speech. The movie over, Penny tried to bid her friends goodbye before Sheldon could start his analytical diatribe but he barely waited for the lights to come back up.

"Penny, that was ridiculous! How do you drag me to these things?"

"I watched the X-Files for you, it was your turn." Penny's friends couldn't help but watch, wondering what kind of hold Sheldon had over Penny to have her watching that crazy show her grandfather had liked about aliens and the FBI.

"The dialogue was atrocious." Carol had no clue what that meant but it sounded bad.

"It's romantic, Sheldon, and they're teenagers."

"He's not. He's roughly 108 years old! He should have the logic of the ages behind him but I would be surprised if he could think beyond a basic high school reasoning level."

"He has more Ph. Ds than you do, Sheldon." Sheldon had a Ph.D? Jessica couldn't believe Penny was with a man who had a Ph. D!

"In what? Literature?" he sneered.

"And he's a medical doctor! You know, I'm not so sure you aren't jealous of him."

"Maybe his immortality but not of his looks nor his seeming art with the female sex. Besides, I would rather find a way to make me immortal without the need for blood. And I haven't even mentioned his 'vegetarianism'," Sheldon's face showed his obvious disdain for the whole idea. Penny knew a cross-cultural analysis of the legends of vampirism was coming so she hurriedly guided him (more like shoved him) down the stairs, turning to wave at her friends who had been glued to their spots listening.

"Bye, girls, it was good seeing you! _Sorry about him_," she mouthed back. They waved, fake little smiles on their faces.

"He must be damn good in bed or she wouldn't keep him around," Carol said, the smile never faltering.

"Mmhmm," Jessica agreed.

AN: to be continued.


	8. The Status is not Quo

Chapter Seven: The status is not quo

"Hey, Penny," Leonard said, his trademark nervous lilt in his voice. "Whatcha doing?"

"Oh, nothing. Just watching Dr. Horrible."

"Dr. Horrible? You like that?" Leonard said, surprised but pleased. "I love Dr. Horrible." A sudden bad thought passed through his head and he voiced it before he could check himself. "Did Sheldon show it to you?"

"No, Sheldon's never seen it. I found it on the internet one day when I was trying to break my Age of Conan habit." Despite the good news that it wasn't something she liked because of Sheldon, the monster squirmed around to hear that she seemed to know more about Sheldon than Leonard did. He repositioned himself in the chair in Penny's apartment, trying to calm the wriggling pain.

"So..." Leonard didn't quite know why he had come over, he didn't know what had driven him to come see Penny. The monster seemed to be beckoning him across the hall. "How are things?"

"I'm good. I don't have any roles right now but the Cheesecake Factory's honest work and I just have to keep trying, you know." She took a bite of the Ben and Jerry's pint in her hand. It seemed to Leonard that she was always flaunting his lactose intolerance in his face. She was always eating something he couldn't, always bringing it up, always thinking of it. Leonard knew it was just his own insecurity but he felt it and, to him, it was real. He looked away.

"Good to see you're keeping your spirits up," he croaked out.

"Leonard, was there something you wanted?"

"You, uh, you got any plans?" Leonard blurted out. "Tonight, I mean, plans tonight?"

"Uh, no. Sheldon's at the lab so I'm free tonight. Don't you have to go pick him up later?" Leonard grit his teeth a little at her reply.

"Uh, no, Raj is picking him up. Says he's determined to show him the virtues of Aishwarya Rai, or something. I don't know. All I heard was I don't have to pick Sheldon up."

"Oh, well, what were you thinking?" she said, turning off Dr. Horrible and putting her pint back in the freezer. "I'm starving. You want to eat?"

"Oh, sure. Uh, pizza?"

"No, it's not Thursday." Penny then turned around and laughed right in his face. "Oh, sorry," she smiled, "I forgot you weren't Sheldon." She started to walk down the hall to her bedroom to change but Leonard stopped her.

"Not Sheldon, huh?" Leonard said, his voice rising an octave with anger. "You forget I wasn't Sheldon when you said you wanted to go eat with me? You forget I wasn't Sheldon when you let me in the door?"

"Okay, whoa!" Penny said, a surprised look on her face. "Where is this all coming from anyway, Leonard?"

"Nothing! Nowhere!" Leonard started to storm towards the door but stopped and turned back around on her. He could feel the heartbeat of the monster thrumming anger throughout his body. He could feel it pulsate and quiver with resentment. He let the little monster take control and spoke. "You know what? It's not nothing. This-this-this-this thing!" he said, throwing his hands up like he was desperate for help to fight the monster flailing around in his chest, "this thing you have with Sheldon. What happened to that whole 'not smart enough for us geeks' stuff? Huh?"

"I don't have any _thing _with Sheldon, Leonard. God, what's wrong with you?"

"Me? Huh? You want to know what's wrong with me?" Leonard's whole demeanor suddenly changed to be that of a man defeated, sucked dry by the little monster living within him. His life, his vitality had been given to the little creature and he was left with nothing but the empty words he could squeeze out of his chest. "I care for you. That's my problem. I've always cared for you. I could handle Dave Underhill and Eric, the pretty boys, the athletic ones, the ones who could eat cheese without major gastric consequences." Penny sighed and sat back down on the couch. Leonard stared lost and lonely at the floor, not daring to look up at Penny. "I didn't have a rainmaker's chance in Hell with them. But, to lose you to Sheldon?" Penny opened her mouth to fight but Leonard didn't see and kept talking. "It's a real blow to my minuscule ego. I've got to go. I lied. I have to pick up Sheldon." Leonard left her apartment without ever looking her in the face.

* * *

Later that night, Penny heard Sheldon's familiar knocking at the door. As customary, she waited until he had completed his ritual before she tiredly opened the door. "What do you want, Sheldon?"

"Well, my, my, that's no way to treat a friend." Penny just threw her hands up listlessly and pushed her way past Sheldon. "Aren't you going to congratulate me on my proper use of sarcasm? It's a tricky language but, if I can master Klingon..." Penny was barely even listening to him. She pulled out a bottle of rum and threw back a glass. "Well, what the devil's wrong with you?"

"Have you talked to Leonard yet?"

"Nothing more than our usual car games. This time we used Presidential last names. I got him with Afghanistan's Hamid Karsai."

"He didn't say anything?"

"There are no current Presidents of the world whose last name starts with I."

"No, I mean," she sighed, frustrated by the narrow context in which he was taking her statement, "did he seem off to you?"

"Off?"

"You know, upset?"

"No." She huffed a big breath and took another drink of her bottle. She held out the bottle to Sheldon who, surprisingly, took it. He took a tentatively sip (after wiping the rim of the bottle with his shirt sleeve) and choked on the fire that burned his oropharynx."Why do you people find that pleasurable?"

"We don't," Penny groaned, taking her bottle back. "It's the feelings we get after the alcohol hits our blood that we like." She sat back and stared at the ceiling, Sheldon just sitting silently in his chair. "What do you want, Sheldon?"

"As I'm obviously intruding on some altercation between you and Leonard, I'll go. If you need me, I'll be in the laundry room."

"Leonard thinks there is something going on between us," Penny said before he could get out of the door.

"Well, that was as subtle as Fat Man over Nagasaki."

"What?"

"Simply, 'way to drop a bomb there, Penny.'" Sheldon sat back down in his chair. "That's absurd."

"You said the same thing about Ramona. Who also accused me of having a thing with you!" Penny drank another hard gulp.

"You know, you really shouldn't try to cope with your problems through alcohol. It's a depressant." Penny handed him the bottle and he followed suit. Penny shuffled into her bedroom and pulled out the technicolor throw she had promised him. She had finished it right before she heard Leonard and Sheldon come home, after which she ran to the liquor store.

"Here!" she threw it at him, not quite enough alcohol in her to make her less depressed. "I finished it. Give Leonard something else to accuse me about." Sheldon, who, only after a few straight shots, was more than three sheets to the wind, laughed.

"It looks even more ludicrous than I remembered it."

"Sheldon, I'm not in the mood."

"Penny!" he announced, wrapped up in his technicolor dream cape, "I'm going to make you feel better!"

"How are you going to do that?" She saw the slight alcoholic glint in his eye.

"I!" he slurred, "I am going to tell you a joke."

"I've already heard your tic joke so this better be good." Sheldon looked like he had to cast around for another good one before he smiled evilly.

"Knock knock." She waited a moment, almost expecting him to say it three times. "Come now, Penny, knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Doctor."

"Doctor Who?"

"Exactly." Penny didn't get it but Sheldon's laughter at his own apparent hilarity was catching, and she soon started laughing. She took another drink and started to feel the warm and fuzzies knock around in her brain and make her forget Leonard's accusations. She wiled the night away with a bottle of rum, esoteric jokes she didn't understand, and stealing back Sheldon's blanket to pretend to be Captain Hammer. She vaguely remembered putting Dr. Horrible back on and watching Sheldon laugh out loud like he never would have sober. She vividly remembered the clumsy way he passed out on her couch and how he sang himself to sleep with a drunken rendition of "Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty while she skillfully pulled the blanket away from him and wrapped herself up on the opposite end of the couch. He'd hate her in the morning but she wasn't about to sleep on the floor and her drunk brain thought her bed was too far away from him to be an option.

AN: Thanks a bunch to my friend Saucy Duck who gave me the Doctor Who joke.


	9. The Figurative Morning After

Chapter Eight: The Figurative Morning After

Penny awoke to find Sheldon tugging on the Technicolor Dream Cape, as they had named it in their drunken cavorting, and mumbling something that could have been her name. She sat up slightly, twisting her head around trying to locate at clock to tell her what ungodly hour it was.

"It's 3:00 A.M. Pacific Time," Sheldon slurred, obviously reading her body language. "And I want my blanket." Penny could tell he hadn't slept quite long enough for his unaccustomed liver to process the alcohol. His eyes had that half-lidded dark look that she had seen before and his body language slowed and less choreographed.

"Where are you going?"

"I want my bed." Penny threw herself back down, her mind a little clearer than his.

"You can't wait 'til morning? I thought you were sleeping fine right there."

"Mother said I was too old to sleep with girls. That's why Missy got her own room." Penny snorted at his strange anecdote from his past.

"Sheldon, sweetie, you're not too old to sleep with girls. Just too old to sleep with your sister." She wondered for a brief, hysterical second why she was trying to convince him it was alright for him to sleep with her. She chalked it up to alcohol; alcohol and emotional disturbance.

"I still want my bed. Penny, take me to bed!" he insisted. Penny thought about laughing in his face at the double entrendre that was his plea but held it back with a bit lip and fingernails in her palm.

"Alright, alright, I'll take you to...bed!" she chuckled as she said the words, barely making it. Sheldon didn't understand why she was laughing but he had the smile of a puppy who had been promised a treat and he bounded behind her, his cape wrapped around his shoulders. They stumbled out of Penny's apartment and barely made it on their own two feet to the door of Sheldon's.

"Do you have your key?" she laughed. Sheldon started digging in his pockets. He handed her the single key he had stuffed in his back pocket.

"Never," he yawned, "leave home without it!"

"Well, aren't you just the good little boy scout?" it took her three tries before she got the key in the lock. Sheldon's lovably goofy smile had her smiling wildly as she opened the door.

"The boy scout motto is "be prepared", Penny." They stumbled in the door together, both tripping slightly over the tail of the cape. Penny loudly shushed him as he snickered.

"You'll wake up Leonard." Penny, knowing her life to be the drama fest that it was, half-expected Leonard to come out of the shadows when she said this. Sheldon walked in front of her and waved his hand in front of her face.

"Earth to Penny," he laughed.

"Shut up," she smiled and dragged him to his bedroom. He opened his door and fell on top of his comforter, too drunk to pull it down and slid underneath. He wrapped himself up tightly in the Technicolor Dream Cape and laid flat on his back. Penny stumbled in and sat next to him on his bed. "I'm not singing it tonight."

"Penny," he whined. On the day he was sick, he had demanded but now, drunk and mostly uninhibited, he pleaded with big puppy eyes.

"Still no, no matter how you bat those eyes at me," she patted him on the stomach and stood up to leave.

"You were always my favorite," he whispered like it was a secret he shouldn't be telling. "Shhh, don't tell Leonard." She had to laugh.

"I'm sure I'll do a better job than you. Night, Sheldon." Penny silently congratulated herself on getting him home without waking Leonard up when she turned to find him standing in the doorway of his room, red plaid bathrobe belt tied angrily around his waist.

"Don't tell Leonard, huh?" Penny sighed. Such was her life.

"Leonard, it's not what you think-"

"Not a "thing", huh?"

"Leonard, don't be this way. It's not we were together or anything." Penny didn't have the energy to fight him tonight. She just wanted to roll up in her bed and hide her face from the world.

"Never mind, Penny. Why would I care? I'm just the best friend." He turned back and slammed the door to his room shut. Penny fell back against Sheldon's door, her hand over her eyes and her heart ripped apart by the two nerds who had changed her life.

* * *

Sheldon Cooper did not like being hung over. It was one of the 700 reasons he had for not drinking alcohol. Reason 1: it dulled the mental processes. Reason 345: it lead to less than intelligent judgment calls. Reason 578: it lead you to say things that you could regret. And reason 699: The hangover was hell. He was at the kitchen sink, calculating the exact amount of aspirin it would take to dull the pain (and, on a rather morbid, but scientifically based, whim, how much to kill him) when Leonard came stomping through the apartment. Leonard didn't say a word but went about slamming cabinet doors and slamming boxes and cartons on the counter. Sheldon winced at every sound, his body tightening up into a little ball as he held to his precious pain medication.

"My God, Leonard, must you?" Leonard didn't say a word but looked at him in a great imitation of Penny's "I do not approve" look. Sheldon thought for a brief second he should share this little revelation with Leonard but thought better of it when he saw Leonard throw the cereal box in the refrigerator. He decided to not say anything to peturb his roommate any further than whatever already was.

On their way down the university halls, Leonard never said a word to Sheldon, who was hanging back with his grey hooded sweatshirt pulled up to protect him from the bright florescent lights and sunglasses to hide the dark circles under his eyes. They passed Raj who looked at them like they were aliens from another planet but didn't say a word.

"Whoa, what the hell happened to you two?" Howard said as he came up behind Raj. "You," he said, pointing to Sheldon, "look like a rapist waiting to happened and you," he said to Leonard, "look like you have a stick shoved up your-"

"Thank you, Howard," Leonard said in his angry voice, "Sheldon's hungover from his late night with Penny."

"WHOA! What happened, man? I mean, if I can't get in there-" Leonard stalked away unhappily, basically throwing himself into his office and slamming the door behind him. Sheldon let out a loud "gah!" at the noise and rubbed his ears.

"Dude, I want details," Raj said.

"Yeah," Howard added, "how was she? What'd you do? Did she take charge?" Sheldon just stumbled into his office and shut the door.

"Dude," Raj said, turning to Howard, "what. the. hell?"

"I at least thought she'd have the pity sex with me," Raj shot him the look, "Okay, Leonard. Then me." Raj just sighed and threw his hands up as he walked away.

"What? A man can't fantasize with a life-sized cut out he keeps in his closet?"


	10. There's No Place Like Home Without You

Chapter Nine: There's No Place Like Home Without You

Sheldon Cooper had been sitting at his desk for eleven minutes, forty eight seconds with his head buried in his hands when his cell phone rang. Uncharacteristically, he flipped it open without checking the caller id (to make sure it wasn't a telemarketer or Howard) and barely whined out, "Hello?"

"Sheldon?" he heard Penny say.

"Who did you think you were calling?" he moaned into the handset.

"Sorry, sweetie," her voice sounded a whole lot more chipper than his.

"How can you be in such a good mood?"

"I just wanted to call and tell you that... I'm leaving for Nebraska today."

"You're," he hissed in a breath in his verbal outburst, "what?"

"I'm going home for a visit," her voice sounded uncertain.

"For how long?"

"Just the weekend." Penny heard Sheldon heave a great sigh and put on his more business-like tone.

"You didn't clear this with me first," he accused.

"I know, I know. I didn't have this planned."

"I'd give you a strike for this if I wasn't so hung over." Sheldon couldn't believe this. She knew it was commonplace to inform your neighbors of your trips ahead of time so they could agree to watch over your place and get your mail. He had informed her that he would like 2 weeks' notice but was willing to have a minimum of five days.

"Sheldon, you are the best."

"I know that," he huffed. He could almost hear her smile through the phone.

"Next time, we'll have a floor meeting, just as stipulated in the floor contract."

"Good bye, Penny," he said just as Raj and Howard walked into his office, "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum just arrived." He flipped the phone closed.

"Let's get it on," Howard said, pumping his fists at his pelvis. "So, how is our little lady love this morning? You leave her asleep? Was she mad you didn't stay for a little...morning delight?"

"Howard, I have no clue what you are hinting at but I have a feeling I don't want to," Sheldon groaned with his head pounding like a drum in his hands.

"Oh, come," Raj chimed, "you can't leave us hanging, Sheldon! We want the deets!"

"Yeah," Howard seconded, "the where, the how, the why-"

"Definitely the why!" Raj interjected.

"Of what?" Sheldon seriously wasn't following the line of questioning. Even in top mental form, he wasn't sure he could figure out what they could be alluding to.

"Your little Panty Party with Penny."

"Good alliteration," Raj commented.

"Thanks," Howard smiled, sticking his thumbs into his belt, "I've been saving that one."

"There was no Panty Party, you nymphomaniac apes."

"Oh, defensive, I get it. You don't want to share. Fine, fine, I get it." Howard and Raj walked out calmly, pulling the door shut behind them.

"Dude, why did you give up so fast?" Raj questioned.

"Because Leonard is an easier target. Come on," he pulled his little Indian friend along.

* * *

That night, Leonard and Sheldon came home to an empty apartment save the key pushed under the door.

"What's this?" Leonard said, more to himself than Sheldon (who he was not speaking to).

"Penny's key," Sheldon said, still not quite picking up that Leonard's anger was at him. In fact, judging from the black eye Wolowitz was sporting, Sheldon had assumed Leonard was angry with him and not he.

"Penny left you her key?"

"Why, yes. She's done it before." Leonard didn't quite no what to say. So, he let his monster do the talking.

"What, do you guys think I'm stupid? Do you think I don't see?"

"I don't suppose you got a doctorate from being stupid and I assumed your glasses prescription was up to date." Leonard wanted to throttle him. He wanted to rip the smug little head off of his body and burn it. The monster wanted blood and, by golly, Leonard was thinking about giving it to him. "Penny's left us her key while she's gone home to Nebraska." Suddenly, Leonard's human side broke out for a moment and he had nothing hateful to say to his social inept friend. He just walked back to his own room and stayed there awhile.

Hours later, robed in red plaid and his white t-shirt, Leonard came padding out of his room to turn the television off. It was so unlike Sheldon to leave it on before he went to sleep. He was surprised to find a rather solemn looking Sheldon on the couch, wrapped in a hideous, could it even be called a blanket?, staring blankly at a television test screen.

"Sheldon," he said slowly, "what's up?"

"Nothing, just couldn't sleep." Leonard leaned back, a little grimace of fear on his face.

"You aren't ill, are you?"

"Not at the moment, why?" Sheldon's eyes never left the pattern playing across the television.

"You miss Penny, don't you?" Sheldon's sternocleidomastoid twitched a little and his masseter muscle bulged as he clinched his jaw.

"No, why would you think that?"

"What's going on, Sheldon?" Leonard asked wearily.

"I'm sorry, please rephrase that last data entry."

"What is going on with you and Penny?" he said, a little more sternly than he would have expected.

"Nothing. We're friends, if I am using the term properly, like you and me." Sheldon's cell phone buzzed briefly and he picked it. He flipped the phone open and obviously read a text message. He shut the phone and laid it back down on the arm of the couch. "Well, good night, Leonard. I'll see you in the morning." Sheldon wrapped himself tighter in the...rag? and entered his bedroom without another word. Leonard, at the urging of the little monster, picked up the phone and opened the last text message received.

"made it to nebraska. C u guys monday ~Penny"

And, suddenly, Leonard's little monster seemed to shrink. He felt a space open inside himself that couldn't be filled with resentment or jealousy. He just looked sadly between the phone and the bedroom door, feeling simultaneously defeated and pathetic, alone and selfish. He shut the phone with a sigh and shuffle off to bed, telling himself it is all for the best.


	11. The People vs Sheldon Cooper, PhD

Chapter Ten: The People vs. Sheldon Cooper, Ph. D.

It had been three days since Penny had come home from Nebraska and Leonard couldn't help but notice that Sheldon hadn't spoken to her once. His little monster beat feebly on his ribs but it didn't feel so much like anger anymore; more sad. Sad at what he felt was wasted opportunity. Often throughout the years he had known Sheldon, he had wondered what if Sheldon had never had the opportunity to be Sheldon Cooper, Ph. D.? What if Sheldon's father had repressed his genius in hopes of having the all-American boy every father wishes for? What if his mother hadn't recognized his genius and left him to drag himself through public school, never challenged? Leonard had admitted to himself long ago that Sheldon would probably win the Nobel Prize someday and it made him sad to think that there was ever a possibility, maybe an alternate universe, where it would never happen.

So, to see Sheldon and Penny apart like this, his little monster wasting away from lack of fuel for the fire, was just a wasted opportunity. He could see Sheldon happy and Penny smiling. He saw laughter and white lace. He saw himself dancing with the new bride on the dance floor, Sheldon awkwardly two-stepping with Missy but with a (non-creepy) grin spread over his face. He saw new apartments and bassinets. Penny driving Sheldon around in a mini-van with their two kids strapped in the back. Comic convention reunions and anniversary presents. Leonard's romantic side couldn't help but visualize a future that would never come if Sheldon didn't get off his ass and do something about it.

Thai Night came and went and Leonard didn't notice anything different about Sheldon. Wii Bowling? Shirt was as perfect starched and pressed as ever. Halo Night? Strategically sound as ever. It wasn't until after the boys had left and Leonard had gone to bed that he noticed something: Sheldon would not sleep without that ugly blanket Leonard had never heard the origin of. One dark night, well after midnight, Leonard heard Sheldon rummaging around the apartment. He threw his robe on and pushed his glasses haphazardly on his face.

"Sheldon?" he said sternly. Sheldon just pause for a moment before he continued to pull things out from under his bed.

"Well, hello, Leonard," as nonchalant as if it was two in the afternoon and he was just cleaning the apartment like normal.

"Sheldon, it's 12:45 am."

"I am aware of the time, Leonard."

"Then what the hell are you doing?"

"I've lost something." Leonard sighed.

"Your blankie?" he sneered.

"Technicolor Dream Cape, and yes," Sheldon said, only half listening to Leonard.

"I took it."

"You took it? Whatever for?"

"Think of it as an experiment."

"You experimented on the Technicolor Dream Cape?" Sheldon gasped.

"No," Leonard smiled triumphantly, "on you."

"Leonard, this is insane. Per the roommate contract, we cannot use the other as lab rats without assent from said 'lab rat' beforehand. Paragraph Seven, Line 12, clause 45. Now, hand over my blanket."

"Now, now," Leonard plopped down on Sheldon's spot on the couch, his hands clasped behind his head. Leonard liked having the upper hand on Sheldon. Sheldon gave him a death glare and Leonard jumped up from Sheldon's seat and into the chair close by. "We need to talk."

"Whatever about at 12:49 am?" Leonard couldn't help but chuckle at the irony that was his life.

"Penny." Sheldon tried to disinterested but Leonard could see the little side gleam in his eye when he said her name.

"Has she violated the Floormate Contract again?"

"No, I think you need to talk to her."

"Well, if she hasn't done anything wrong-"

"No, Sheldon, I think you like her!" Leonard smiled.

"Objection, you are not certified to conjecture on the states of my mind."

"Sheldon, I think she likes you too."

"Objection, you are not her. How can you speculate on her feelings?" Leonard let out a long suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. He glanced up to see Sheldon fidgeting uncomfortably. He was getting cagey. Leonard let out a smile. He was so going to win this case.

"I call into evidence," Leonard said as he pulled the Technicolor Dream Cape from under his chair, "this."

"Give that back, Leonard, I don't have time for this."

"Ah, ah, ah," Leonard held the blanket just out of Sheldon's reach. "This multi-colored catastrophe that you acquired roughly around the time that you and Penny got heinously drunk together. I theorize that Penny made it for you." Sheldon just looked guiltily at his pajama pants.

"I also call into evidence the said night of drunken reveling. People's 2."

"Leonard, you upset her that night. It was your fault that she turned to alcohol to comfort her again."

"And you wanted to stop her."

"If," Sheldon stressed, "that had been the case, I would have failed miserably."

"You wanted to help her," Leonard said as the facts of his case lined up. "People's 3: Twilight."

"Now, Leonard, you know very well that I only went to Twilight with her because, per our agreement, it was her turn to pick the movie. Believe me, she got her comeuppance the next week with a marathon of Death Note."

"How very date-like."

"Objection, move to strike."

"The People withdraw their last statement. People's Four: Halo Night."

"It was ice cream! Howard's already asked me about that," Sheldon shuddered and Leonard couldn't help but twitch a little too. It was Howard they were talking about.

"You let her touch your food."

"I didn't have a choice! I was obvious busy."

"People's Five-"

"Good God, Leonard, how long can this go on?" Leonard felt like he was breaking him. It wouldn't be long.

"People's Five: The X-Files marathon."

"Objection, relevance?"

"Establishes a pattern of behavior." Sheldon was dismissed and Leonard felt victory in his grasp. "People's Six: The Day Penny Threw Me From Her Apartment But Let You In."

"I can't answer for Penny's behavior."

"People's Seven: Rock Band?"

"I only thought it appropriate to invite her to join the festivities."

"You let her sing!"

"Alright, perhaps that was a bad move on my part," Sheldon conceded in a rare show of humility and humanity. Perhaps she was changing him after all.

"People's Eight: You let her sit in your seat. And People's Nine: Christmas." Sheldon didn't respond so Leonard summarized his case. "In conclusion, I come forth with the theory that you, Sheldon Cooper, Ph. D., are in love with Penny." Sheldon just looked at him with that superior look of his. "In the case of the People versus Sheldon Cooper, Ph. D., how do you plead?"

"I plead the fifth. Court is adjourned," Sheldon said as he snatched up the Cape and threw it around his shoulders.

"You can't plead the fifth half-way through a testimony. Law states that once you agree to testify, you cannot withhold certain information under the Fifth Amendment," Sheldon's bedroom door slammed and Leonard smiled. Sheldon already knew all that. "Guilty as charged."

AN: I don't see many more chapters after this. It's winding down. I don't have any idea how many chapters are left until I write them. It could be one or twelve, who knows? All I know is, the end is coming.


	12. Humans are Interesting

AN: A little Death Note esoterica so just ask and I'll answer any questions. Slight spoiler to the end of the anime.

Chapter Eleven: Humans are interesting

"Penny! Penny! Penny!" Sheldon waited, slightly impatiently outside her door early the next morning. He could hear her feet slogging through the clothes obviously sprawled all over her floor and a sleepy groan echoing around the room.

"What?" she growled rather than greeted. He looked taken aback for a moment before he gathered himself up enough to speak again.

"I need a ride."

"A ride? I thought you had to work," she said, yawning and scratching her head.

"Precisely, Penny. I need a ride to work."

"Well, where's Leonard?" In reply, Sheldon handed her a piece of paper torn from a composition notebook. She read it out loud.

"_Sheldon, going to Leslie's. No wasted opportunities. Leonard Hofstadler, Ph.D. 12:54 am. _Sheldon, what the hell does that mean?"

"I haven't the slightest clue. All I know is that I woke up with this taped to my forehead andd and no prospect of Leonard coming home in time to take me to work." She sighed, moving out of the way, motioning for him to enter the apartment. "Wait here, I'll go get dressed."

"Thanks, Penny. I believe the phrase is 'I am indebted to you to the score of one.'"

"It's 'I owe you one', but you were close." He heard the click of plastic clothes hangers being taken from the closet. He said there, not letting his mind wander to the words Leonard had said to him late last night. He refused to believe that it had any standing on his relationship with Penny. He had barely moved into the friendship stage with her and Leonard wanted him to believe he was in love with her? What did that even mean? He knew the popular definition. He knew what he saw in television and movies. He remembered a conversation he had with Penny during their Death Note marathon.

_"What a jerk!" she exclaimed. Sheldon couldn't help but smile maniacally. _

_"It's brilliant, Penny. He has a willing participant in his plot who will do as he says because of her stupid devotion to him. You know, I've never quite fully understood her devotion to him. There is only so far good looks can take him, I'm sure, and her own personal tragedy drove her to him. However, you'll notice that it stops being her personal tragedy that is the impetus to her devotion but, instead, becomes her own love, or shall I say lust, of Light Yagami." _

_"She loves him, Sheldon," Penny frowned at him. _

_"Well, what does that have to do with anything?" Penny huffed and looked back at the screen. _

_"You just don't understand. A woman would do anything for the man she loves. It doesn't matter in the end whether it was right or wrong. She loved him, whether she agreed with him or not. And, sometimes, women who are scorned or ignored or abandoned or alone, well, they'll take anything they can get, you know?" _

_"Penny, that's slightly anti-feminist of you. I'm surprised. I always imagined you were the front runner of women's liberation."_

_"Well, I can get old-fashioned when it comes to love. Hand me the popcorn." _

Penny was the old fashioned type, huh? Sheldon studied the pattern on her furniture, running a finger over the grain of the fibers. He had never felt like he had time for basic human interaction before Leonard and he had found friendship. Would Penny change him mind about his stance on love? He felt his muscles twitch and his face jerk to the side. It was his conditioned response to thoughts he felt would interfere with his work. When he was a child and thoughts of Batman instead of building the DNA of a griffin would enter his mind, he would jerk his head to the side, effectively shaking the thought out of his brain.

He had once told Leonard that he could be Batman (he did have the voice) and suddenly, he felt like Bruce Wayne. That his own pursuits and passions were getting in the way of his life. It was a frightening thought for the indestructible (barring law enforcement and physics) Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D. Never had the thought that his work was _stopping _him from being happy crossed his brilliant mind. He suddenly didn't want to go to work but spend the whole day on Penny's couch, watching and re-watching his Death Note dvds and analyzing all the ways that Light Yagami's brilliance led him to unhappiness in the end. He had always interpreted the end as Light dying in the satisfaction that he had devoted everything to his work. He suddenly wondered for the first time if Light would have been happier if he had never had the Death Note, if he had never become Kira, if he had never sacrificed everything for his vision.

Penny chose this moment to emerge from her bedroom and pick her keys off the counter. "You ready, sweetie?" He just nodded, hoping this new train of thought would be quickly derailed. Leonard was not allowed to be right.


	13. Rides with the Nerd

Chapter Twelve: Rides with the Nerd

If nothing else, Sheldon was good at compartmentalizing his errant Penny musings so as to ensure a pleasant ride to work. Penny had seemed to brighten up from his early awakening and was participating in his little car games with more patience than she had shown before. Sheldon didn't know if it was a softening of her attitude towards him or just mere acceptance of what was and her method of making the best of the situation.

"Beast Boy," she said, turning down any street he instructed.

"Robin."

"Starfire," she smiled a little.

"Don't tell me that covert grin of yours is a secret love of Robin and Starfire."

"Don't try to pull that crazy psychological association crap on me," she shot back. "Besides, what if I do like to think about Robin and Starfire together?"Sheldon had a sudden flash to his conversation with Leonard and ignored her question.

"New topic: Characters from Harry Potter."

"Hermione Granger." The little game went smoothly for the rest of the trip (Sheldon won on a dispute over whether The Giant Squid counted) and Penny pulled into the University lot with a smile on her face, despite her loss. Sheldon got out of the car and readjusted the strap on his messenger bag.

"Well, Penny, I thank you for the ride," he said, so awkwardly that Penny just wanted to slap his face when she thought to everything they had shared together. Why couldn't he just be himself with her? It was one of the things that upset her the most when she thought about them. She just wanted him to be easy with her. But, at the same time, she realized that Sheldon was being considerate of her feelings. He wasn't the type of man to leave you with a hurried and insincere "thanks!" as he slammed the door and walked away without so much as a glance her way. He was trying his best to show her...show her more concern that any other man had ever given her before.

"Anytime, Sheldon," she smiled. She saw a slightly hidden glint in his eye.

"Can I get that in writing?" Any other day, any other time, she would have been offended by this but she had seen the hint of sarcasm in his eyes, the ever-so-slight upturn of the corner of his mouth, the relaxation of his facial muscles to show amusement. Penny had always been a natural at reading emotions; that had been one of the things that had drawn her to Sheldon over the other boys. Howard's intentions were easy enough, Raj was getting better at expressing himself non-verbally to her (she saw that as a step towards actually speaking), and Leonard wore his heart on his sleeve. But all her old tricks didn't work on Sheldon. He had his emotions carefully hidden away from the world. For what? Safety? Fear of rejection, embarrassment? She didn't know. But, even subconsciously, she knew that she wanted to dig them and know them better than she knew her own. It was times like this that she scared herself with her own feelings. She didn't know how these feelings played out. It was something she had never thought before and it scared her. "Penny," he said in that familiar tone of asking a question, " how would you like a tour of the University?"

"Oh, I already saw it with Dave."

"No, I believe Dave showed you a janitor's closet and his lab station. How would you like to see our offices?" She looked in his eyes and, just before he turned them away to look at her fingernail polish, she saw the fear of rejection.

"Sure, sweetheart, I would love to see your office."

"You can park in my space."

"You have a space?" He would have scoffed at her repetition of the obvious but he was in a peculiar mood of lenicy.

"Of course, all the professors and researchers do. Fourth space from the left in the first row, or, landmark-wise, right next to Leonard's car." As she backed up to go park in his space, Penny saw the pride in his eyes; and Pride was a male emotion she was well versed it. Sheldon was proud to let Penny park in his spot. And she realized he probably guarded this as vehemently as he did his spot on the couch.

TBC

Next time on Evolution: The whole gang has lunch together at the University and Leslie has a few smart-ass things to say to Sheldon and Penny.


	14. If the Enzyme Fits

Chapter Thirteen: If the Enzyme Fits...

"This looks like your office," Penny said, running a finger over the books on his desk. He sat down in his chair and opened his computer.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, not out of conversationalism, but with his perpetual scientific curiosity.

"Well, it just kind of has a Sheldon vibe."

"Vibe?" he said incredulously.

"Yeah, it just...feels like you in here." She came over and hopped up on his desk. He gave her a stern look but she just smiled exaggeratedly and winked at him. He kept typing as she picked at her nails thoughtfully.

"What are you working on?"

"My new article on string theory. You see, Leslie Winkle recently published an article on black holes and loop theory-" his diatribe was cut short by Leonard skipping into Sheldon's office.

"Shel-don!" he sang.

"Someone's still basking in the afterglow," Sheldon bit out. Penny laughed which caused Leonard to notice her. She was sitting on Sheldon's desk, her back to the door. His brain had to work through each layer of this before he could breathe again. Penny...was sitting on Sheldon's desk...her legs crossed and bumping the arm of his chair...ON HIS DESK....SHELDON....DESK...TOUCHING.

"Oh, hey, Penny."

"Leonard," she smiled cheekily. She turned her body around and her knee brushed Sheldon's forearm...AND HE DIDN'T NOTICE! "I heard someone got lucky last night," she leered, chuckling like a schoolgirl.

"Yes, and didn't think ahead enough to procure me a ride," Sheldon said, sending a meaningful look towards Leonard. Thank God Scanners wasn't real. "On that note, where ever did you get the clothes?"

"I took my emergency bag," he said hurriedly, "Penny, what are you doing here?"

"Sheldon offered me a tour of his office." Leonard, his monster long dead, was left with just the shock that it MIGHT ACTUALLY HAPPEN.

"Wait, you took your emergency bag?"

"Yeah, Sheldon's office?"

"Well, I was hoping to get a tour of your office too. We stopped by Raj's earlier. He almost spoke to me today." Penny smiled triumphantly.

"Leonard, you can't just take your emergency bag for romantic trysts. What if we have nuclear fallout today? I am not sharing my underwear."

"Whatever," Leonard blew him off, "You want to come see my office?" She looked down at Sheldon who waved her off and Leonard ALMOST expected her to kiss him goodbye like the good little couple they should be.

"I can't believe you would compromise the integrity of your emergency bag!"

"It was an emergency!"

"Last time I checked, the libido could be suppressed long enough to pack a decent overnight bag."

"When we come back, we'll go visit Wolowitz's place," Penny said.

"We will?" Sheldon raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah, like I'm going anywhere alone with Howard. See you later, Sheldon." Penny sauntered out of the door first. Sheldon looked up to see Leonard give him the thumbs-up. Sitting swimming in the sea of denial, Sheldon retorted,

"In Australia, that's a vulgar hand signal which translates to 'up yours'."

"You better close the deal on this, Sheldon," Leonard smiled foolishly. Sheldon gave him the thumbs-up and Leonard couldn't quite decide which translation to take.

* * *

At lunch, Howard came in with bowed legs and a band aid on his forehead. Leonard snorted and was about to ask what happened when Penny and Sheldon came in. Howard shuffled over to the left and let Penny sit down, with a deferential bow. She glanced up at him, the power evident in her eyes.

"Why, thank you, Howard."

"Of course, Penny, I always treat woman with respect." Leonard couldn't help but laugh as Howard surreptitiously moved his hands over to cover the family jewels.

"I take it you had a good time touring Howard's office."

"He let me drive the Mars Rover," she flashed her eyes up at him and Leonard almost saw the thunderbolts.

"Hey, Hot Stuff!" Leslie said in her girly voice before sitting directly into Leonard's lap."Dumb ass and, oh, hello."

"Hi, Leslie," Penny said, not forgetting their last encounter in the hallway. Leslie looked down at Leonard disapprovingly.

"She's here with Sheldon," he smiled.

"Dumb ass and Malibu Barbie are knocking boots?"

"Leslie," Leonard chided gently, "that's not nice."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she sent one of her sarcastic smiles down towards their end of the table. "I meant, 'dumbass and Penny are knocking boots?'" Raj made the "oh, what now!" face while trying to hide his amusement behind his hand. Howard had to bite his tongue, almost snorting milk out of his nose. Leonard just got this crazy look on his face like he was half way between amused and scared for his life.

"No, we are not in a relationship of that sort...or any sort, for that matter." Sheldon deadpanned.

"What, couldn't close the deal? I thought she was easy." Penny was on the verge of going all Junior Rodeo on her when Sheldon spoke up.

"She's not easy. She didn't even sleep with Leonard." Leonard sneered at Sheldon, ready to make his hurt reply when Leslie stood up.

"Did you just call me easy?"

"Well, if the enzyme fits the substrate..." Sheldon went back to his pudding, sneaking a look at Penny. She had a covert grin on her face as she winked at Sheldon.

"Leonard, this is just like last time. You're not going to let him talk to me like that, are you?" Leonard, feeling a little bit braver than usually (maybe because Sheldon had just kicked him in the testicles), stood up and looked Leslie right in the eyes.

"This is going to happen every time you goad him to it, Leslie. I don't think you should talk to Sheldon like that." He had a feral, controlling glint in his eye.

"God, I love an alpha male," she growled before launching herself at him. Sheldon and Penny left the table quietly, sharing amused snickers at the pair.

Howard and Raj just sat there, dumbfounded by everything they had seen.

"Dude," Raj sighed, "what the hell?"


	15. The Good Doctor Jekyll

AN: I know, I know. Where the hell you been, MrsVC? Teh Suck came and killed my drive to write, followed by writer's block, followed by writer's diarrhea (which this chapter is a result of so it is, quite literally, crap.) So, if you hate it, just say so. I get that.

Chapter Fourteen: The Good Doctor Jekyll

The ride home was quite pleasant. Sheldon was slowly letting all of Leonard's poppycock about love slip out of his logistically reasoning. He innately knew that love was not logical. It couldn't be. Pure logic was too sensible to be led astray by feelings and hormonal responses. He just let himself be happy in the scholarship of a female personality. It was fascinating to know a woman. Leonard was quite feminine but there was something different about the actual female persona. To Sheldon, they didn't answer to logic at all. Their logic was skewed by the throbbing of their heart and it didn't bother them in the least. The whole conundrum was mind-blowing to Sheldon. Penny was happy today and there was no logical reason for her to be; Sheldon had awoken her early, made her stay at the University, subjected her to Howard's sexual harassment, and forced her to play chauffeur and she was happy about that. Logically, Sheldon had assumed that Penny would, as past experience had taught him, be quite angry with him. And it was all very puzzling.

"Sheldon," Penny said uncertainly. He turned to look toward her. She had decided to appease Sheldon and keep both hands on the wheel and to always use her turn signal. "I just wanted to thank you."

"For what? If anything, I should be thanking you." These social rules were quite black and white to him but here was feminine logic making it all gray and smeared again.

"No, you stood up for me today."

"Think nothing of it," he said quite seriously.

"Sheldon," she started.

"No, I said "think nothing of it." It was my victory over Leslie, not some heroic princely rescue, Penny." Penny wanted to be angry with Sheldon but then she looked at his face. He almost looked in pain.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he squeaked.

"Sheldon," she groaned. "Don't be this way. Look, we're even. Okay? You don't have to think because I'm thanking you that some reciprocity law or social order is waiting around the corner, okay?" She had totally misinterpreted him, as usual, but didn't pursue it any farther. He was puzzled, not pained. Why was she happy? Why would she thank him?

"Forget it, Penny. You are obstinately turning a non-issue into an issue!"

"Alright, alright, you're the boss. Hey, you are coming over for Jeopardy! and movie night, right?"she said, smartly changing the subject.

"Of course I am. I believe it is your night to choose."

"How about a night of old Hollywood?" she smiled. Sheldon couldn't help but notice the frequency with which she presented him with a smile. It seemed he was the sole receiver of these expressions lately, or at least, he received the most from her.

"Oh, so you finally paid your cable bill?"

"Well, no." She grimaced at the rear view mirror. "Damn it, they're doing Oscar movies all month on TCM and I wanted to 'treat' you to _The King and I_."

"Why does that sound like a nefarious scheme of _Twilight_ proportions?" She smirked at him. Now there was an expression he was comfortable receiving. He couldn't help but let a little corner of his mouth quirk up. "I wasn't going to tell you but Leonard's got a date tonight. You could always filch our cable once again."

"You'd really do that?"

"I will live to regret it but the important point is that I will live." They pulled into the apartment parking lot and Penny threw it in park. "Thank you for the ride home."She smiled that happy, genuine smile again that scared him to death and winked.

"Thanks for showing me around the university. You were right; the labs were quite different from the Janitor's closet." He smiled. He always did love to be right.

"I will see you at seven."

* * *

"What is "the dark side of the moon"?" Penny thought for a second before the lightbulb sparked.

"Oh, the Pink Floyd album? That's not the answer. Why would the Russians have pictures of Pink Floyd?"

"No, Penny. The answer is alluding to Sputnik I, the satellite that captured pictures of the so-called 'dark side of the moon.' The other half of the answer is giving the much un-needed pop culture reference to make the answer more accessible to the intellectually common." Penny gave him a disapproving look but couldn't help but smack him when Alex revealed that Sheldon was right.

"Sheldon! How the hell did you know that?"

"It wasn't from any inherent knowledge of Pink Floyd, if that's what you were assuming." She sneered at him before throwing away the score card. Sheldon had won, of course, by a seeming million dollars to seven (she bet too much on the Daily Double.) Sheldon's apartment was quiet now, Wheel of Fortune muted until eight o'clock when Penny's movies would start on TCM.

"Why weren't you going to tell me about Leonard's date tonight?" she sprang out him out of the blue.

"I don't know about you but I have discovered that talking about one's ex to their ex behind their back is considered social unacceptable. By all technicality, it wasn't any of your business as you have reneged your right as a viable mate."

"I'm his friend, though. Friends are allowed to be..." she looked up at the ceiling and let her thought trail off. He sat quietly, begging her silently to finish the sentence. "Curious," she smiled.

"It took you a full twenty seven seconds to come up with curious?" She huffed at him, stealing the remote from beside him and started to flip channels.

"You know what? How about you not talk through _The King and I_?" And he didn't. He kept his mouth shut. He never said a word when he discovered it was, God save him, a musical. He kept his mouth shut when the King _apparently_ died of a broken heart. He didn't say a word. He just let the movie roll and let Penny have her way. He would document his discontent in his social log later that night along with an in-depth analysis of the effects of obeying Penny's wishes had on her mood. Penny, of course, didn't make it to the end of the movie. She had fallen asleep sitting straight up on the couch with her head thrown back. She was drooling a little out of her open mouth and her uvula was quivering against her nasopharynx (Sheldon reminded himself to say 'snoring' when he told her.) He ran a quick algorithm through his mind of all the possible choices of how to handle this situation but at option 15 (collect a sample of her saliva to run her genome), she flopped over on the couch, her head facing the door in a completely unsafe manner. (Darwin would be appalled. Survival of the fittest indeed.) He quickly jumped up from the couch and sat in the armchair as her legs swung up and smacked into his seat. He thought about waking her up but supposed it would be more friend-like if he allowed to her to rest. She would be in a good mood tomorrow if she got an adequate amount of rest. Had he known the precise time she had gone to sleep, he could have started a log so as to know the minimum amount of hours of rest Penny would need to function adequately.

A new movie had started on TCM, Robert Osborne introducing it as the performance which won Frederic March the Oscar in 1932. He watched the movie with little interest, scoffing that Dr. Jekyll believed he could split someone's personality with chemicals! (Sheldon had, of course, tried this himself. He couldn't do it, it couldn't be done.) The movie was brimming with melodrama and Jekyll's obsessive love for Muriel was honestly sickening.

_"You've opened a gate for me into another world,"_ Dr. Jekyll professed to his Muriel._ "Before that, my work was everything. I was drawn to the mysteries of science, to the unknown. Now the unknown wears your face, looks back at me with your eyes."_

And when the movie was over, when Dr. Jekyll's life was stolen and destroyed by his work, Sheldon Cooper went to his room and wrote those words in his social log. He didn't understand it at the time but he thought that, with logical analysis, he would know why those lines seemed to be the most important in the entire movie.

AN: The 1932 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is my new favorite movie. I had, because I couldn't watch the last ten minutes, DVR'd it and luckily, it taped the entire movie. And the saddest thing was, when I hear Jekyll say that line to Muriel, I automatically thought of Sheldon. How sad and small my life has become.


	16. The Dubious Breakfast Crisis

Chapter Fifteen: The Dubious Breakfast Crisis

Leonard stumbled into his apartment at roughly 1 am, a little drunk (mostly alcohol, a little with love) and giddy as a schoolboy who got lucky for the first time. He threw his keys down (not even caring if they hit the key bowl or not, Sheldon be damned!) and flipped on a light. He ran into the kitchen to get some aspirin to ward off the hangover that would come in the morning (probably not smart to mix aspirin and alcohol, Sheldon voice be damned!). He threw his head back and tried to dry swallow the pills but failed miserably and ended up hacking up a lung and more than likely inhaling the pills instead of swallowing. As soon as he was able to breathe again, he saw the body stirring on the couch, covered in Sheldon's Technicolor Dream Cape of Colorblind Doom (the last part was Leonard's own invention).

"Sheldon?" he whispered, wondering why his roommate would be sleeping on the couch. The light glinted off the long blonde hair that made Leonard sober up a little. "Penny! What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hell, what time is it?" she grunted.

"Shh," he laughed, "it's about 1."

"I must have fallen asleep when we were watching _The King and I_." The humor wasn't lost on Leonard.

"You made Sheldon watch _The King and I_?" he snorted.

"Shh, don't wake him up. I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it," she couldn't help but laugh at the hilarity of Sheldon suffering through a musical. Leonard stumblingly made his way over to the couch and sat in Sheldon's seat as Penny tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes."Bastard left me on the couch."

"He did, at least, cover you up." Leonard pointed out, his genius IQ telling him that the best battle strategy was to attack from all sides. He had already planted the seed in Sheldon late at night, now Penny.

"Oh, God, he actually kept it," Leonard could hear the "aw" in her voice. Evil genius smirk, indeed.

"He won't sleep without it now."

"He won't?"

"Nope," Leonard smiled as Penny looked thoughtfully at the throw blanket. Victory! "I hid it from him once and I found him in here searching for it." He could see Penny squirm and shift.

"How'd your date go?" she said, feebly trying to change the subject.

"Leslie has been trying harder not to be overbearing or controlling. Because, you know, that's what you do when you love someone. You bend to their needs a little more than your own. You do what's good for them rather than what makes you happy." He shot a meaningful look down the hall. "You're welcome to stay on our couch." Leonard got up and (barely!) made it to his room.

Penny sat in thought on the couch for a moment. Things had been so different between her and Sheldon since Christmas. Sheldon had been so much more tolerant of her. He had welcomed her company. He had included her in his life more and more. He had watched _Twilight _and _The King and I_ with her. He slept with her blanket; her horrendous creation was important to him. She ran a hand over the yarn and smiled when she saw the note on the coffee table.

_Penny, _

_You fell asleep during the last three and half minutes of the film. I hope your rest will be equally as restorative despite sleeping on our couch._

_Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D.  
11:34 pm_

Penny smiled and curled right up on the couch. She wanted to see what he'd do in the morning.

* * *

Penny made sure to wake up extra early and make a pot of coffee. She was sure Sheldon didn't drink it but she wanted it to be a thank-you for all he'd done for her lately. Leonard's words were swimming around in her head. "It wasn't love, it was gratitude, Penny," she kept telling herself. She set out two clean mugs and thought about making breakfast for them. She knew where Sheldon kept his cereal but was half afraid to touch it. Her eyes fell on the Technicolor Dream Cape and she just thought, "screw it." She pull out his bowl and the milk, trying her best to make them equal proportions like Sheldon would. Leonard came sniffling through the apartment first, drawn to the smell of the fresh coffee Penny was pouring him.

"Oh, Penny, if I wasn't with Leslie," he said jokingly as he took the offered mug. She laughed as he downed a big gulp, hoping to re-hydrate his body. She set a bowl of cereal (his favorite, made with soy milk) in front of him. "Oh, when can you move in?" he said, no understated sexual tension in the phrase. Penny never realized how much she was missing by letting this "thing" with Leonard be awkward. She realized just how much she loved him as a friend, a true friend, and how she just liked to be around him.

She smiled and shot back, "If I don't have to pay rent? Tomorrow." Sheldon came padding down the hall next, fully clothed and wide awake.

"Morning, Leonard," he said, just a little too chipper for the hungover nerd. All he received was a groan in reply. "Penny," he greeted.

"Morning, Sheldon," she smiled, enjoying what it was like to wake up with people you love around you. She missed home, she missed family breakfasts and Christmas mornings. Wait...people she loved? New topic. Leonard was not going to win.

"I hope your sleep was sufficient?"

"It was," he sat down with Leonard and accepted the offered bowl of cereal. Penny could see the doubt in his eyes but she hoped none the less. He hesitantly picked up the spoon she had left him and dripped into the bowl. Penny couldn't believe he was actually going to eat cereal she had made him. This was bigger than the ice cream because she had forced that on him. Now, he was willingly (okay, maybe forcing himself to be willing) eating something she had made him. She glanced up at her and she said the only thing that she thought would fit, "I washed my hands first." It seemed to work for him. As Penny watched Sheldon trying to argue with a very hungover and little interested Leonard about the Catwoman costume ("in the first Batman comic, she didn't even wear a Catwoman costume!" "Like the first appearance of a villian amounts to much"), she could only think one thing.

_Damn it. _

_Leonard's won.  
_


	17. Ad Finem

Chapter Sixteen: Ad Finem

"Penny," Sheldon said in the middle of Friday Movie Night. It had become a tradition now for Penny to come over to Sheldon's apartment on friday night and watch a movie. She would always spend the night on his couch and make her boys breakfast on Saturday morning. "This might sound slightly intrusive but when was the last time you had sexual intercourse?"

"Oh, God, here he goes again," she mumbled into her spoon of Cherry Garcia. "Sheldon, if this has something to do with some a chart or pie graph, I will kick you out of your own apartment." She had learned that Sheldon's questions were never much more than a scientific curiosity so she now just threw him off with a Missy-like threat of castration.

"No, it's only that you have not been on a quote-unquote date in nearly eight Friday nights. The last time you went so long without sexual intercourse and social interaction outside of our social circle, I found you weeping hysterically in the hallway. Given the data, I assume that a similar breakdown is not to far away and am attempting to protect myself from the onslaught," he replied, trying to keep a look of fear on his face but it slipped.

"That's not it," Penny said slowly, "is it, Sheldon? That's not the real reason you asked." Sheldon rolled his eyes dramatically and gave her a pointed stare.

"Penny, I cannot lie. Do you think I could give you a false explanation without giving myself away physiologically?"

"No, that's why I caught you. Your fleas are hopping, Sheldon."

"They're tics, Penny."

"Whatever, I can see it in your eyes. There's something else." Sheldon stood quickly and she watched as his lanky body twitched all the way to the kitchen. He started to scrub at the counter top, avoiding her completely. "Sheldon," she cajoled gently. "Sheldon." He looked up at her quickly and she caught the fearful look in his eye."Tell me what it is." Sheldon picked up the sponge and then let it drop to counter. Penny suddenly felt a fear like she had never known before, or perhaps, she had. It was a fear that almost seemed reminiscent of when she was fifteen and got her first kiss.

"Penny, I'm not comfortable with this."

"Sometimes life isn't comfortable, Sheldon. I can only help you if you let me." She felt lame and stupid and cliched like one of the dumb movies she had forced Sheldon to watch but it seemed like the only thing she could say to him.

"What is this?" Sheldon blurted out, not indicating anything with his hands or eyes.

"What, Sheldon?"

"This. Friday Movie Night. Breakfast. Halo."

"It just our things, Sheldon."

"I know, I know. But I understand why I have things with Leonard. I understand the friendship dynamic there. I understand, albeit questioningly, the dynamic I have with Wolowitz and Koothrapali. But I don't understand our dynamic. What is the endgame?"

"Endgame?"

"Yes, what are the predisposed outcome of the events? Where is this heading?" He was obviously getting no where with her so he tried again. "What does this say about us? Does this make us acquaintances? Friends? Lovers?" the last he said with a sort of timidity that told Penny it was either his greatest hope or his greatest fear.

"Are you trying to define us now, Sheldon?"

"I cannot function in ambiguity, Penny." And she knew he couldn't. She looked at him, staring down at his long fingers like they were going to answer his felt her stomach lurch in a way no man has ever made it before. She could remember all those awkward relationship questions she had faced over the years: Do you love me? Do you want to move in together? Can I kiss you goodnight? Can I stay the night? But none of those questions had made her heart stop beating for as long as this one. Her stomach felt like lead, her feet like iron, her hands like smoke, her head like mist. It was as if, subconsciously, Penny knew all that was at stake here. She knew this could be more than a weekend boyfriend or a another Kurt. She knew he was offering her more than Kurt every could. Sheldon Cooper wasn't a man who did things half way. If he was going to love her, he would throw himself into it completely; just like he did with his work, just like he did with Halo, and his friendship with Leonard. He would put his whole heart into this. He wouldn't give up. He wouldn't leave her. He would do everything in his power to make this work because Sheldon Cooper didn't do things half-assed like her boyfriends of the week did. And, for a moment, Penny was fifteen years old again and getting her first kiss. She was scared of the newest of it all, of the idea that she didn't know what to do, and that this event would change her life. She wasn't a "big ol' five" any longer; she was a scared little girl feeling love for the first time. She stepped forward just once, bumping her stomach against the edge of the counter top, not letting her eyes drop away. She had to see this through. If she wanted this, she couldn't do it half-assed either. She stood up on her tip-toes and pecked him once on the lips.

"Was that supposed to be an answer?" he mumbled, not moving, barely breathing.

"Yes."

"It...suffices." Penny smiled before offering him a hand. He looked at it for a moment, licking his lips. He tentatively linked his long fingers with her shorter, graceful ones.

They watched the rest of the movie and Penny slept on the couch again. Only, this time, Sheldon stayed with her and let her lean her head on his shoulder. When Leonard came home to pair on the couch, the fuzz on the television illuminating the small smile on each of their faces, and their fingers still locked together, Leonard let his smug little smile set into place before he went into his room and pulled out his notebook. He flipped to the last page of his experiment log and wrote:

_Hypothesis confirmed. Sheldon Cooper really is human. _

He took a picture on his phone and promised himself that he would give it to them framed on their wedding day.

_**The End**_

AN: OMG, it's been amazing, guys. I quite enjoyed writing this. I'm so sad to see it come to an end and yet, I think this was the way to end it. I want to thank everyone who's ever even clicked on the link, even if they were Leonard/Penny fans who ran away in disgust. You guys have been great and I don't think I've ever finished a story so in love with the characters before. This has been a great ride, guys. Thanks for riding with me!


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